____/ [H]omer on Friday 19 October 2007 00:55 : \____
> Too many opportunists, filing too many trivial patents?:
>
> .----
> | Pachooka-san writes "An article in the Washington Post touches
> | on the 'real' patent problem -- the quotas that Patent Examiners
> | must meet. They have no effective quality standards, only
> | production standards, so many applications get only cursory review
> | just so the PE can keep up the grueling pace. The USPTO is the only
> | government agency that can and does lay you off if your
> | productivity drops below 85% of the standard for your civil service
> | grade. A Primary PE has to process 5 new and 5 old applications
> | every 2 weeks (that's 8 hours each, folks). The best part -- that
> | 28-box application mentioned in the article? -- it gets the PE the
> | same credit as the smallest application. How many of those 28 boxes
> | do you think even got opened?"
> `----
>
> http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/10/18/2036215
>
> How many of those applications represent something that could reasonably
> be described as "invention"? Very few, I'll wager.
>
> IP has become a purpose, and thus an industry, unto itself. Much like
> the money business, where people make a living doing nothing more than
> playing with numbers in a computer terminal, but nothing useful is ever
> actually /built/ that benefits society. The money business is little
> more than professional gambling, and the IP business is just blackmail
> and extortion. Is this meant to be the future of the software industry?
Money drives many people, not invention. If there's money in abuse of the
system, then this abuse will replace actual development.
--
~~ Best of wishes
Roy S. Schestowitz | Viruses to Linux are like cancer to a shark
http://Schestowitz.com | GNU/Linux | PGP-Key: 0x74572E8E
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